Woman named to run FBI's New York division

The Associated Press

A woman who has worked at the FBI for 23 years is the new head of the FBI's New York Division, the bureau's largest with 2,000 agents and other employees.

With a strong background in national security work and counterterrorism, Jan Fedarcyk becomes the first woman to be named an assistant director for one of the FBI's operational field offices. Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., are the other two field offices run by an assistant director.

Fedarcyk's job is a key position in the FBI's anti-terror effort, and she becomes one of the first women ever to hold such a high-ranking operational post in the FBI.

Recently, Fedarcyk led the Philadelphia division, where she oversaw the investigation leading to pending criminal charges against two American women accused in a global terror plot.

Most FBI field offices around the country are run by a special agent in charge, or SAC. In her new position, Fedarcyk will have six SACs reporting to her.

Fedarcyk will succeed Joseph M. Demarest Jr., who is now an assistant director in charge of the international operations division. Demarest will be responsible for more than 600 FBI employees at FBI headquarters and in legal attache offices around the world.

After becoming an FBI agent in 1987, Fedarcyk was assigned to Los Angeles where she investigated organized crime, drug cases, money laundering and gangs.

Promoted in 1996 to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., Fedarcyk coordinated FBI responses to domestic and international crises and special events and became the first FBI liaison to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She returned to FBI headquarters in 2001 as an assistant team leader in the inspection division.

Fedarcyk became the assistant section chief in the counterterrorism division's terrorist financing operations section in 2003. Subsequently, she was put in charge of the national center for the analysis of violent crime in the FBI's critical incident response group.

In 2005, Fedarcyk began serving as the FBI representative to the National Counterterrorism Center's directorate of strategic operational planning.

She was instrumental in developing a classified national strategic operational plan in the war on terrorism.

In 2007, she became special agent in charge of the counterterrorism division in Los Angeles.